2012 Stoller Family Estate Pinot Noir Estate Dundee Hills 750 ml

Perfect Pinot Noir Vintage in Dundee Hills?

The 2012 Pinot Noir growing season in Willamette Valley was one for the record books, with many suggesting that this will be Oregon's first 100-point vintage. A cool spring made for a small crop set, setting the stage for one of the more miraculous stretch runs in valley history. The summer turned warm and exceedingly dry. Low yields and drought conditions spiked concentration, leading to an early harvest of extreme ripeness — even as acids remained firm and piercing.

Only once in the last 20 years can we recall an Oregon vintage that has received so much critical acclaim — Wine Spectator's 97-point 2008 campaign. A word to the wise: With the greatest names in Willamette Valley — Penner-Ash, Stoller, Beaux Frères, Bergström, and Cristom — just releasing their spellbinding 2012s, given the small crop size, Pinot Noir collectors should be on high alert.

Lynn Penner-Ash's 2012s take a page out of a warm-vintage Côte de Beaune playbook. These are charming Pinot Noirs that would feel most at home in a lineup of Volnay Premier Crus. At Lemelson, the vintage made for somewhat deeper, more New World Pinot Noirs, combining primary-fruit juiciness with high-toned backbone. Josh Bergström — whose whole-cluster protocol makes for darkly colored, brawny Pinot Noirs — had a field day. If you get a chance to lay your hands on any of Bergström's top single-vineyard 2012s, bust open your kids' piggy bank. Tell them you'll pay them back later.

Stoller Estate, Dundee Hills

But after tasting (literally) hundreds of striking 2012s at the International Pinot Noir Celebration in late July, if we were to pick a single wine that best tells the story of this one-of-kind harvest, it would be this one.

At world-class Stoller Family Estate, set in the high ground of the Dundee Hills — one of the warmer AVAs in the valley — yields were tiny, stunted by that chilly spring. With just a couple clusters hanging per shoot when the call to harvest came in late September, natural sugars were quite high, even as acids were riveting. Having followed Stoller's wines since the late 1990s, even before they were bottled under their own label, we can report unequivocally that we've never tasted Pinot Noirs from this estate so deep in color, so intensely concentrated, so dense — yet so perfectly balanced.

One caveat: If your palate is mostly geared towards lean, angular Pinot Noirs from cool vintages on the Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits, this one may not be for you.

But, if your Pinot preference is for dark, black raspberry concentration, New World opulence buttressed by Old World structure, it's unlikely that you'll find another $25 Pinot Noir that holds a candle to the 2012 Stoller Pinot Noir "Dundee Hills."

Glistening, dark ruby/crimson to the rim, infused with a luscious mix of black raspberry, black cherry, sweet spice, and underbrush.Rich, powerfully structured, and extravagantly concentrated on the attack — speaking volumes to the small yields and drought conditions of 2012 — the core is packed with crushed-red-fruit preserves, lightly laced with new-French-cooperage cedar. Gorgeous now, right out of the gate, for its primary-fruit opulence, but like all the great Stoller Pinot Noirs of the last 15 years, don't be afraid to lay this magnificent 2012 down for 8-10 years. Handsome dividends will be paid to the patient.